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Sunday, May 14, 2017

Mothers' Day Changes When You Lose Mom

Today marks my third Mothers' Day without my mother, but I'll never stop celebrating this day.

My mother went to sleep on Christmas in 2015 and died that night. We got the call around 11:30 pm that she had just passed around 11:15.

I'm not going to take you back down that memory lane. Believe it or not, it's not that sad for me because seeing my mother's lifeless body in her PJs and under her Tennessee Volunteers blanket (given to her by my brother and sister-in-law for Christmas), I couldn't be all that mad at the world. That's what she wanted, ultimately, to "get home" to see my father. She made it for Christmas.

What I want to talk about is the process I went through after Mom died. Losing my mom was much tougher on me than losing my dad. While I had periods of spending a lot of time with both, I think most people would call me a "mama's boy" and I'm fine with that. For me, losing Mom just sucked because I lost my best friend.

For one thing, I called her every night, and, if I didn't call her one or two nights, she'd call me on the third night to find out what was so important going on that I couldn't call her. She was the one that I would unwind my day with and tell her what happened. She knew all the big events in my life and what was going on. If I didn't tell her something, she always had a way of finding out. So, I adopted a social media and blog policy, if I wouldn't show my mother this posting, then I wouldn't post it. I still adhere to it today.

So, guess what I do? I still talk to Mom, and I think she still knows what's going on in my life. Just because the physical person is gone doesn't mean you have to stop talking to them. I would highly advise against doing this on a street corner in downtown Indy, but I do still talk to my mother if I need to do so. When I don't talk to her enough, she crashes my dreams now.

It's been a process, and I still miss her. Her memories bring more smiles than tears now, but I'll still hear her favorite songs and get a little tear in my eye. I think that will happen forever. Anyway, I wanted to write this blog post for those of us without mothers on Mothers' Day.

2 comments:

Jon, what an amazing, moving post about your dear mother and about Mother's Day. May God rest her soul. I could have written most of this piece even from the viewpoint of the death of your father. Thank you so much for sharing. I can identify with you regarding being called a "mama's boy". That comment, intended to be derisive and demeaning, is light years far from the truth. A real man is close to his mother, a real man loves and respects her dearly, a real man treats his mother like platinum, a real man keeps in close touch with his mother in this life and when she's passed on to the next. You, sir, show us all how to value and care about themothers who brought us into this world.